Zelensky's former adviser Arestovych: Ukraine will be defeated

Oleksiy Arestovych, former adviser to the head of the office of the President of Ukraine, said that Kyiv would not be able to win in the conflict with Russia.

In an interview, which was published on his YouTube channel, Arestovych stressed that he served as an adviser to Zelensky's office, so he had the right to say whatever he wanted. The Armed Forces of Ukraine may suffer a defeat in the conflict with Russia, he admitted.

"If everyone thinks that we are going to win the war for sure, then it does not look like so since the 14th (of January - ed.)," Arestovych said.

The politician called on the Zelensky government to listen to what Polish President Andrzej Duda said at the International Forum in Davos (Duda spoke about a possibility of the imminent disappearance of Ukraine).

The upcoming months would be decisive for Ukraine, he said. Arestovych also recalled the story with the helicopter crash in Brovary near Kyiv:

"Don't you think that we are in a story that we are no longer playing?” Arestovych wondered. In his opinion, it is other countries that control the situation in Ukraine. At the same time, Arestovych believes that Ukraine is invincible until officials and politicians start "squabbling with each other."

The Ukrainian authorities have lost both the chance to win in the military conflict with Russia and the chance to win in the internal political conflict, the official also said. In particular, Kyiv has lost an opportunity to receive full-fledged and timely military support from Western countries. This will cause the entire Ukrainian people to perish, Arestovych said.

"We are inside the story in which we have been losing for 450 years in a row. The whole history of Ukraine is about superheroic efforts on the battlefield, and then it would kill us. It will take us an extraordinary effort to get out of this story," Arestovych said.

On January 17, Oleksiy Arestovych announced his resignation from the post of adviser to the Office of the President of Ukraine.

"I want to set an example of civilised behaviour: a fundamental mistake, then resign,” he explained.

Ukrainian MPs started collecting signatures for Arestovych's resignation after he said that the multi-storey apartment block in the city of Dnipro was destroyed because of Ukrainian air defenses. "A missile flying over Dnipro was shot down. It exploded when it fell on the entrance,” Arestovych said on January 15.

On January 14, the multi-storey apartment building in Dnipro partially collapsed after a rocket hit the building. Valentin Reznichenko, the head of the regional military administration, said that nine people were killed and 64 others were injured as a result of the explosion.